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THE CRITICS DEBATE General Editor: Michael Scott The Critics Debate General Editor: Michael Scott Published titles: Sons and Lovers Geoffrey Harvey Bleak House jeremy Hawthorn The Canterbury Tales Alcuin Blamires Tess of the d'Urbervilles Terence Wright Hamlet Michael Hattaway The Waste Land and Ash Wednesday Arnold P. Hinchliffe Paradise Lost Margarita Stocker King Lear Ann Thompson Further titles are in preparation PARADISE LOST Margarita Stacker M MACMILLAN ISBN 978-0-333-38443-5 ISBN 978-1-349-19229-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19229-8 © Margarita Stocker 1988 Reprint of the original edition 1988 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1988 Published by Higher and Further Education Division MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Stocker, Margarita Paradise lost.-(The Critics debate). I. Milton, John, 1608-1674 Paradise lost I. Title II. Milton,John, 1608-1674. Paradise lost III. Series 821 '.4 PR3562 5 Contents General Editor's Preface 6 Acknowledgements and Note on the text 8 Part One: Survey 9 Introduction 9 Thematic approaches 14 Form and genre 22 Historical approaches 31 Psychology and myth 36 Reader and text 42 Feminist approaches 50 Part Two: Appraisal 59 Reading writing in Paradise Lost 59 Heroic writing? 71 References 86 Index to Critics 94 6 General Editor's Preface OVER THE last few years the practice ofliterary criticism has become hotly debated. Methods developed earlier in the century and before have been attacked and the word 'crisis' has been drawn upon to describe the present condition of English Studies. That such a debate is taking place is a sign of the subject discipline's health. Some would hold that the situation necessitates a radical alternative approach which naturally implies a 'crisis situation'. Others would respond that to employ such terms is to precipitate or construct a false position. The debate continues but it is not the first. 'New Criticism' acquired its title because it attempted something fresh, calling into question certain practices of the past. Yet the practices it attacked were not entirely lost or negated by the new critics. One factor becomes clear: English Studies is a pluralistic discipline. What are students coming to advanced work in English for the first time to make of all this debate and controversy? They are in danger of being overwhelmed by the cross-currents of critical approaches as they take up their study ofliterature. The purpose of this series is to help delineate various critical approaches to specific literary texts. Its authors are from a variety of critical schools and have approached their task in a flexible manner. Their aim is to help the reader come to terms with the variety of criticism and to introduce him or her to further reading on the subject and to a fuller evaluation of a particular text by illustrating the way it has been approached in a number of contexts. In the first part of the book a critical survey is given of some of the major ways the text has been appraised. This is done sometimes in a thematic manner, sometimes according to various 'schools' or 'approaches'. In the second part the authors provide their own appraisals of the GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE 7 text from their stated critical standpoint, allowing the reader the knowledge of their own particular approaches from which their views may in turn be evaluated. The series therein hopes to introduce and to elucidate criticism of authors and texts being studied and to encourage participation as the critics debate. Michael Scott 8 Acknowledgements I am very grateful to Jocelyn Price for reading parts of the text. Gordon Campbell, T. G. S. Cain, Ernst Honigmann and Helen Wilcox were generous with information and practical help. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the Renaissance Research group at Liverpool, and to those at Crewe and Alsager College, who provided much stimulating feedback to my paper on feminist approaches to Milton. Michael Scott has been the most patient of editors, my husband the most patient of unpaid helps. Note on the text For Milton's poems reference is to the one-volume edition by Douglas Bush, The Portable Milton (Harmondsworth, 1976). For Milton's other writings references are to the Bohn edition of The Prose Works, ed. J. A. Stjohn et al., 5 vols. (London, 1848-53). Marvell is quoted from The Poems, ed. H. M. Margoliouth et al., 3rd edn. (Oxford, 1971); Dryden from OfD ramatic Poesy, ed. G. Watson, 2 vols. (London and New York, 1962);Johnson from J. Lives of the Poets: A Selection, ed. P. Hardy (Oxford, 1971); Clive james from Glued to the Box (London, 1983). References to these texts, and to critical works, are given in square brackets. Critical works are cited by author and date of publication, with page references as appropriate. In cases where a critic named in a given section does not appear in the corresponding section of the References, consult the Index. 9 Part One Survey Introduction IN April 1981 the television critic of The Observer, Clive James, described the launching of the space shuttle Columbia, which had been delayed for several days by a malfunction in one of its four computers. He fantasised that the computer's mind was on other things. Having processed tax returns for Pittsburgh, it moved on to cataloguing old Bing Crosby hits and 'counting all the cows in India'. The computer dragged itself back to the launch only after completing a 'digital rewrite of Paradise Lost' [ 1983, 180-81]. Apart from their massiveness and pointlessness, the computer's extramural activities evidently shared an incongruity with its high-tech environment. They are also all readily recognisable cultural symbols or 'signs'. In this respect Paradise Lost is a text representative of Western culture, an accepted 'classic' ofEnglish literature. Through the centuries it has been constantly reread and re-evaluated in ways which reflect the shifting attitudes and values of its readers. This has been at once the most admired and the most reviled of literary 'classics': no major text has been so strongly challenged by influential critics as this epic was in the mid-twentieth century, or so thoroughly defended. For this reason, no less than because the poem has never failed to speak to different generations in diverse ways, the controversial critical history of Paradise Lost involves not only the important issues raised by this problematic text but also, to a degree, the history of our own attitudes and their contemporary manifestations. Although it was written over 300 years ago, this epic is not so incongruous an object in the 1980s asjames'sjoke might suggest. Not as yet digitally rewritten, like other major texts it can be subjected to linguistic analysis by computer.
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